I’ve recently bought a WiiM Mini to give my good old Harman Kardon AVR 132 receiver access to Bluetooth and AirPlay 2. So far I’m very happy with the little “hockey puck”. It sounds very nice hooked up through Toslink. And the HK supports a maximum of 24/96 on its digital input.
However I’ve noticed that Roon appears to be less happy with the WiiM Mini when it comes to streaming music to it through AirPlay. Often while playing a playlist playback just stops at the start of a track. It can be after the first track, or after a few tracks. But playback will stop.
I’ve tested Apple Music’s AirPlay to the WiiM from my M1 MacBook Pro and it happily plays for hours at a time.
As a test I’ve also had Roon use AirPlay to connect to one of my Harman Kardon Citation One speakers and that also plays without issues so far.
I’m now testing Roon with playing some full albums and see if that continues playing.
Apple Music will be aac stream as it’s not lossless via AirPlay, Roons AirPlay will be lossless perhaps the Wi-Fi on it isn’t good enough to maintain it?
You’re probably right. Roon Radio seems to pull from my local files as well. And those are still generally 320 kbit AAC.
As a test I’ve played a track through my iFi Zen DAC V2, my Harman Kardon Citation One (AirPlay) and the WiiM Mini (AirPlay). And these are the signal paths.
Perhaps the WiiM’s wifi module isn’t that great. Although if I play a normal album, it plays without problems so far. Only when Roon Radio kicks in then it will stop at some point. My Harman Kardon speakers have not shown this behavior so far. I have 2 of them.
And when playback stops it is always at the start of a track. Never like halfway through.
Hopefully Roon Ready will be implemented soon. As on the WiiM’s road map it is scheduled to be released on the 15th of January. With a bit of luck RAAT will work better compared to AirPlay.
The weird thing is that it only behaves like this with Roon. Apple’s Music app (AirPlay), Tidal Connect or the WiiM’s own app play perfectly fine so far.
I had this issue a few years ago with my Sonos 5 and raised a ticket - I spent a significant amount of money upgrading to a NUC and provided Roon support with several logs but nothing worked and I gave up on Roon.
Then a year or so ago I got a new Wireless router and the problem resolved itself.
I’ve been having this exact same issue with Roon via Airplay to WiiM Mini and gave up using it quite awhile ago as it was too frustrating. It’s only with Roon I’m having the issue - I don’t have issues using Airplay to WiiM with other services (I don’t know why that’s the case). Roon uses Airplay1, WiiM uses Airplay2 - not sure if that has anything to do with it. Looking forward to Roon Ready on 1/15 so I can use it as an endpoint instead and hopefully resolves this issue.
I too will be looking forward to the Wiim Mini and Pro being Roon Ready but just as a point of reference, I’ve been using Roon to stream to two Wiim Minis and a Wiim Pro without any issues at all. The problems in this thread don’t sound like a Wiim issue as much as a router or wifi issue.
Well I’ve discovered that WiiM won’t be able to add Roon Ready to the Mini. Only to the Pro. As the Mini apparently doesn’t have enough RAM to fit the Roon protocol.
Never by a product based on promises. This is the exact reason Roon changed the Roon Ready program to not allow unfinished code out. If you want to get a product that supports Roon wait until it officially does before buying it. I only just bought a Fiio M11.I wanted it as soon as I heard it was going to be Roon Ready but waited until it was finally released.
Wiim sound like they didn’t do their research or it was always planned for the Pro and just bad communication.
Well I didn’t buy it for Roon Ready. I’ve bought it to give my living room hi-fi access to Bluetooth and AirPlay. But Roon Ready has been on the road map for months. For both Mini and Pro.
I bet they will stop showing a roadmap if they get badly burned here. It’s a nice thing to do but also a a road to customer unhappiness when things are delayed or cancelled. Roon learned this early on and why we don’t get to hear about new stuff until it’s pretty much ready to go.
In the case of the Wiim it was only recently announced that they were looking to add Roon Ready support, so hopefully no one bought the Mini based on that (it has Airplay though so will still work). The Pro looks to be a more capable device and I am patiently waiting for it to be available in the UK.
Wiim have been great at expanding the device since release.
Fully agree with the don’t buy anything based on promises though, based on the litany of long delays and outright failure to deliver by some companies.
They do mention a possibility of a Roon only mode as it seems the limiting factor is the onboard ram as Roon SDK takes too much of what they currently have left and so would stop them being able to continue to add features to it which they also have planned. You can only fit so much in to 128MB of dram. Roon takes 50MB on its own according to them
They might end up stretching it beyond its capabilities otherwise, and have already done really well extending it.
No idea when the Pro is coming to the UK though
